Chapter 25

New York, 1951

 

 

We met this time at Ralph’s apartment. Apartments in New York are expensive. They don’t have to be very pretentious to be expensive, as if this was news to anybody. Ralph’s place is not pretentious, but it is expensive; it has to be costing him a lot more than his salary will permit.

“Red, I asked you over because I have some important things to say. I know what you want to hear, and it is going to take me some time to tell you.

“I know you have been to Siegsdorf, and I know you just came back from Reinicke’s. And I know you have been asking questions. But before you come to any wrong conclusions, let me be the one to set you straight. I think I can satisfy you, but I am not sure you are going to like what I have to say….”

“Ralph, what are you talking about? Have you done something with my gold!” I interrupted him, blurting it out without thinking.

Ralph was married, and his wife was in the kitchen. He had invited me out on his terrace overlooking the Hudson River. He knew what was on my mind when I came in. He knew by the look on my face, and by what his friends in Europe had told him.

I stepped back from the rail surrounding the small beam-supported patio. The rail was made of wrought iron, solid and square, set at a ninety-degree angle to the beams. The architect had taken pains to provide not only a pleasing-to-the-eye structure, but one that would withstand a heavy weight propelled against it with some force. It was sturdy. The fall to the cement below was fifteen floors, a nasty bump if the railing had ever given way.

Being afraid of heights, I moved away from it just in case, to an uncomfortable chair; one of a matched set to an art-deco, faux ice cream parlor table, the kind fashionable these days. They’re small, not taking up much space, just right for a small apartment terrace.

I remembered Walter Reinicke telling me that part of the Berghof gold was missing. And I remembered Ralph saying that Steinmann had given him part of it for his son and part for himself, when Steinmann was headed for Argentina. It might account for Ralph’s elevated standard of living. But I never stopped to think about this when I practically accused him of dipping into the load we had buried. Ralph anticipated me and lost no time in telling me he had taken some of the Berghof loot for Murielle but didn’t take any for himself.

His wife came out with some homemade chocolate cake, but no accompanying coffee. Not even hot chocolate. She asked me if I would like a glass of milk, something I seldom drank. I accepted. I was hungry. I hadn’t had a chance to eat.

We conversed a few minutes about where they met. She was from Salzburg, so I wasn’t surprised to hear they had known each other during the War.

I was about to lay into him again, after she excused herself and went back to the kitchen. I really thought he had gone back to Germany and dug up our gold, mine and Lucy’s. He had to account for the way he was living. He had to have gotten some additional money from somewhere.

He knew I was angry, but he paid little or no attention to me. He changed the subject. “Red, I want you to tell me what you know about the Reinicke brothers and where you think Steinmann is today.”

“The Reinickes are dead,” I said, raising my voice again. His wife couldn’t hear me. We could only faintly hear her rustling her dishes. “My girlfriend shot them both. I’m a hundred percent certain of that.” Then I told him the details of their unfortunate encounter with Lucy and her Winchester, followed by the incident at the burns. Ralph just nodded his head while I talked, and then nodded some more when I told him I had no idea where Steinmann was.

I continued: “Reinicke told me Steinmann had recovered to some extent. At least he was well enough to walk. So now I understand he took the share of the Berghof gold he promised you, the share you wouldn’t take for yourself. He gave some to Reinicke and used the rest to head out for Argentina–so much the better for everybody but the Argentines.”

Then I said in an exasperated voice: “Now it’s your turn. Now you tell me about Ravensbruck. I know you’ve been back there checking to see if I’ve been messing about the area. That is, I think you have. And I know Carl had, and maybe some of the others have, too.”

I threw this out to see what he would say. I had no idea if he had been, but I would’ve been willing to bet he had.

“You are right about that,” he answered, not surprising me. “Carl came to see me when he could not contact you. I realize now why you kept to yourself, and why you moved around. But you see, none of us knew what you just told me. They thought you had taken the gold for yourself; that is Carl did, and so did Muller. I never saw Eric. What else were they to think after you tried to fool us all by calling the burial location Ravensbruck?”

“What did you say?…Muller?”

“Yes, Muller. I am pretty sure Muller was his name. He was with us when we buried it along with Steinmann’s box.”

“Does this guy, Muller…is he connected in some way to your organization?”

“No. But we know about him.”

“What? Tell me what you know.”

“He lives out in the west.”

He didn’t have to say more. It was like a light bulb going on in my head; I knew immediately who he was. This is the guy Fogerty told me about who had visited with his relatives in San Angelo. Now I remembered where I had heard the name. He had been one of my squad members. He was one of the dozens of replacements whose names I heard and then had promptly forgotten.

“Ralph, this Muller must be working with the Reinickes and Steinmann. Walter never told me Muller came to Berchtesgaden to see Reinicke’s sons, but I’ll bet you a dollar to a doughnut he did. Walter never said anything about Muller when I asked him if any of you ever came back. Of course, Walter never associated this guy with our gold; he wasn’t there the night we came back from the lake. He joined us later at Siegsdorf. That accounts for it.”

I paused for a minute, thinking: “It makes sense now. This Muller is with the Reinickes and Steinmann. They sent him to San Angelo to talk to his relatives who were there to check on Lucy.” Then I took the next half-hour or so telling him about Muller and Fogerty, Worthington, and Joyce Wagner, and about how the Muller family had come to San Angelo with money enough to buy a house and a business. And of course about my suspicions.

When I finished my story, he said: “Do not be too sure somebody is still looking for you, including this Muller fellow. That is to say, they were, but not anymore.

“You came here tonight thinking you had lost a friend–me. You are thinking I dug up your gold to keep for myself. But then, you do not really believe what I said, do you? You know for a certainty that nobody has.”

I was really surprised at what he just said. It made me think:

I knew no one knew where we buried it except me. But I swear before I leave tonight, I’m going to find out if it’s true. And I’m going to find out what he knows about who killed my two sergeant friends. And I’m also going to find out about Steinmann’s box.

I’m tired of playing games. I’m tired of the stress of everyday living, knowing I’m fair game for somebody out there who wants to dole me out some of the same treatment. There are a lot of people interested in doing so. And I’m tired of guessing who they are.

“What do you mean, you’re going to tell me something not to my liking?” I asked him.

Ralph saw the perplexed look on my face and hurried on: “Yes, well, I am. First off, I want you to know I have saved your life. I have told you before about this International Tripartite Commission I work for, and how they were appointed by the United Nations to find out where all the missing Nazi gold is still hidden. That is part of their job; the other part is to distribute it to its so-called rightful owners. They are also empowered to locate and arrest anybody having anything to do with it.

“They concluded at the end of the War that more than three percent of all the gold in Germany, outside the Merkers mine, and all the diamonds inside were missing. They also knew we buried half the gold someplace between Berchetsgaden and Lintz. They knew because they knew from the Reichsbank records how much was transported to the Obersalzberg via Bavaria and the Oberbayern. And they knew how much we turned in.

“And recall, you and your men are number one suspects. Remember me telling you. Well, you still are. And, furthermore, they now know where you live.

“You were easy to find. You slipped up. I mean, they have known for some time you lived in New Orleans. It was easy for professionals, those who make a good living finding people who do not want to be found.

“The question was: What were they going to do with you?

“When they located you, they had you followed, hoping you would lead them to where it was buried. When Carl was murdered, they suspected the Reinicke brothers and Muller. But they had you down as the number one suspect for doing Eric in.

“What you just told me is the first any of us heard about Lucy killing the Reinickes and then faking her death. They thought it was you who killed Lucy. And now, from what you just told me, I realize Joyce Wagner knew the truth all the time, but she did not say anything for fear Lucy would tell Worthington’s wife about Joyce and her husband. Worthington went along with it all for the same reason.

“It was at this point the Commission decided to take action against you. They had given you what they considered to be plenty of time to recant and return it. They had given up on you. When they decided you were about to dig it up and run off, they let a contract on you.”

Ralph paused for a minute. He wiggled around in his uncomfortable chair before continuing: “This contract called for you to be kidnapped and tortured until you told them where Ravensbruck is. Then they planned to do away with you…”

“And then that’s when you rescued me,” I interrupted. “How did you go about saving me, because I’m obviously saved? Nobody has come near me since my set-to with the Reinicke brothers.”

Ralph replied: “I saved you after the contract was out by telling them you had always intended to give it back. I told them you had a change of heart a month or so after we buried it. But the reason you did not tell them immediately was because you had forgotten where it was. That is right. I told them you had always wanted to give it back, but you could not remember where we buried it. And of course, like the others, I was not supposed to have known.

“I told the Commission the whole story; the truth as I knew it. I told them how right after we buried it, you told us all we had just passed through a village called Ravensbruck. As it turned out, it was a name that just popped into your head. The others had no idea where we were, and since Ravensbruck sounded German, they just accepted it without question. Not until they tried to find it again did they suspect you of cheating them. But I knew this was not the case; furthermore, I knew the real name of the town we had just passed through, and it was not Ravensbruck.

“The Commission knew Eric had been killed. They knew because Joyce told them. They concluded you did it, because you thought Eric was going to kill you. They reasoned that, since you had cheated Eric, you killed him in self-defense. To prevent your being picked up by one of the Commission’s mercenary bounty hunters, tortured and maybe murdered, I told them you could not remember where you hid it. That is the truth; you had forgotten. And you can not remember now, can you?

“And if the Reinickes had found you, they would have killed you, because you would not have been able to tell them where it was. You would have been treated just like your friends. You would have been tortured to death, swearing you had forgotten; but they would not have believed you.

“I had no choice but to tell the Commission where it was buried. And once I told them you had forgotten the name of the town and how we got there, I had to tell them I knew the route we had taken from Siegsdorf. But I told them I had no idea of the name of the town. I had no reason to believe the town was not really called Ravensbruck. I convinced them, however, that the two of us could locate it if we worked together. I waited about a month, supposedly to give us the necessary time to find it, and then I told them we had figured it out. It was either your life or the gold, and I chose your life. I hope you agree with my choice.”

I was in shock, to say the least. But I was relieved at the same time. The gold had been a millstone around my neck. There was no doubt about it.

He went on to tell me more. But this time, I really became upset. This time he really shook me up.

“I made a deal with them,” Ralph continued. “If I showed them where the gold was buried, they would agree to leave you alone.

“They were also to pick up Muller and to see he was either compensated for or scared away–that was part of our agreement. Of course, when Muller found out they had recovered the gold, he was no longer interested in you. But, whatever, you are not going to have any more trouble with him. And then there is Joyce: there is no longer any need to keep her in San Angelo. She will be reassigned someplace else.”

I said: “This doesn’t sound all that bad to me. I can live and be happy without their gold, just as long as I don’t have to be looking over my shoulder constantly.”

“Right,” he answered, “I figured you would feel that way–but I have not told you the worst part. There is more to come. And I am afraid you are going to like it even less before I am through.”

Before I could ask him what he was talking about or say anything else, he continued on: “They know you took the diamonds, as well. And the deal requires you to give them back.”

Now I was in real shock. “Do you mind telling me how they found out? I stammered.

“Not at all. You sold two stones to the same dealer in New Orleans. The deBeers company of Amsterdam, who sets the price of diamonds through a worldwide diamond commission, monitors all large stone sales. Yours were two of the largest they had heard of in a long time. It was a simple matter to connect you with the mine incident at Merkers.

“Thoms and Veick knew there was an open sack. When they inventoried the unsealed sacks of platinum, rubies, and coins, they could not account for the diamonds. Through a simple process of elimination, they concluded you and your men took them.

“The reason you were not arrested right then by General Earnest was because Patton did not believe Thoms. He told Earnest to look elsewhere for the diamonds. He thought Thoms had them and Earnest could not prove otherwise, so he kept his mouth shut. It was later, after General Patton’s automobile accident and death, that they started investigating you. If you had taken just some of the diamonds instead of all of them, you just might have gotten away with it.”

“What I don’t understand is how deBeers knew I sold them in New Orleans?” I stammered. I could hardly catch my breath.

“Because your dealer told them. He probably thought you had only the two stones. And I suppose he thought he was not going to get his hands on any more, so he told them. And the cartel in Amsterdam paid your dealer a healthy finders fee, to be applied against his next ordersomething like that. But you can rest assured it revolved around money.

“The Commission assumed you stashed them in a safe deposit box in New Orleans,” he went on. “They figured you rented it using an assumed name. It was no problem to find your deposit box after they found you. Actually they did not find you; the deBeers people told them where you were.

“You see, deBeers wants that cache of diamonds out of circulation. They want to buy them back. They want to control the market exclusively. A cache of big stones in that quantity tends to upset the market if they are ever circulated. That is why they did not want you to have them. That is the way it was explained to me, more or less.

“Getting back to the point,” Ralph went on, “the Commission has put a legal stop entry order on your deposit box, as of yesterday, thinking you might pick them up and take off. Now here is the deal: They will leave you alone if you turn the contents of your box over to me. You have no choice. Anything else is suicide.”

He was right. I had no choice. I would like to say I didn’t care, but I would be lying. I care. Now Lucy and I are going to have to make other plans. I’m going to have to go back to school, and I don’t want any part of it. But as Francis Bacon or somebody else once said, “There are sermons in stones, books in running brooks, and good in everything.” Maybe now Lucy will marry me. Maybe things are not a total loss. Maybe she is the good in everything that is supposed to come out of all this.

“Ralph, tell me something: How did you know I made up the name Ravensbruck. None of the others thought twice about it. How come you knew? Since you had no idea we were going to stop where we did, how come you knew the town we had just passed through was not Ravensbruck?”

“I have a simple, a real simple answer for that,” he answered. “One of my duties was to procure fresh fruits and vegetables for the SS mess halls. Before the War, farmers used to bring their produce to the compound. When food started getting scarce, I went to them to make sure they were not selling to somebody else for more money.

“I guess I had been through every town and hamlet within a radius of seventy-five miles many times. When you said Ravensbruck, my ears picked up on the name immediately. Ravensbruck is a city all right, but a long way away from where we were.

“I never said anything. I knew you had not inadvertently made a mistake when you told Muller the place was Ravensbruck. I knew you had some kind of plan to keep the gold. I had no intentions of questioning you or interfering in any way. I never would have if I had not been forced to. I wanted to tell you I knew you had a plan to keep the gold, and that I had no intentions of interfering, when we were in the process of burying it. But I changed my mind.

“You see, I must confess, I never objected to what I knew you had in mind. I stayed out of it, because I did not want it returned to German hands. And I knew it might be. In the meantime, if you buried it, it was not going anywhere. And later, I knew you could not find it. And neither could anybody else.”

We changed the subject, which was all right with me. Now, I’m even more depressed. And I know it’s going to get worse as soon as the shock wears off. But maybe it’ll get better. Maybe it’ll be worth it in the long run if it’s been holding Lucy back. And I know it has.

Anyway, Ralph told me he was coming to New Orleans with an armed escort in a few weeks to bring back the diamonds.

I’m broke. All I have left is a few thousand dollars in currency. Lucy is going to have to give up her apartment. But again, who knows, all this might turn out for the best. But right now, I don’t see her being too happy about living in a small Texas oil town when I finish school. And it has me worried.

“Ralph, does this box of Steinmann’s have anything to do with the deaths of Carl and Eric?” He looked surprised I had picked up on a connection. He thought a minute. I knew what he was going to tell me would be the truth by the way he hesitated, not in a hurry, taking his time so he’d give it to me straight, not wanting to mislead me or tell me a lie. He somehow thought it did, because of his off-hand remark back at the Konigssee, when he told me it had evil powers and had been responsible for a lot of innocent deaths. I had forgotten about it soon after he said it; I had a lot on my mind at the time.

I was starting to get angry all over again, not so much at Ralph and the loss of the treasure, as I was with this whole SS nonsense. And I told him so.

He replied, curtly: “Nonsense? I guess it is nonsense if you disregard the half billion they stole, and if you can overlook the millions of deaths they caused, and the millions of atrocities they committed. If you can, I guess you can call it nonsense.”

Then he paused a minute to settle down before answering my question: “You knew, when we buried the gold we buried Steinmann’s box. I keep calling it his box when I really mean your box. Remember you were designated keeper by him after he was incapacitated. It did not matter that you might not have wanted the job; it was only important that it was his responsibility, and you were the only military officer available–so like it or not you became responsible to take care of it.

“Within days after the cessation of hostilities, I dug up the box and returned it to its rightful owners at the museum in Vienna. That relieved you of your keeper responsibilities, but it set you up for some bad fortune; it caused the death of your friends. And it caused a change in your life as well; it has caused you to lose your gold and your diamonds. And it is why the incident you told me about on your fishing trip occurred also. I am sure of it.

“Do not look at me so smugly,” he said. “You would not, not if you knew Adolph Hitler had been the keeper before Steinmann, and you know what happened to him. Well, it happened to them both; it happened to Adolph just days after it was released from his care and keeping….”

I interrupted him: “Ralph, what are you going on about now? You haven’t said one single word to me–not one word have you ever uttered about this mysterious box of yours that has made one lick of sense. Not one word. And something else. You are a member of the SS, and you’ve been beating around the bush about that, too.”

I was upset with him. Still, I knew he was right in what he had done about the gold and the diamonds. But this crazy talk about that Halloween box of his was getting to me.

I continued uninterrupted with my harangue: “Now, the next thing you’re going to tell me is a crazy comic-book story about UFO aliens giving this phantom box to Steinmann with a promise to help him re-conquer the world. And what about that other foolishness you were giving me about losing my soul if I insisted on getting mixed up in this mysterious box business any further than I was?”

Ralph answered again, testily, his feelings obviously hurt. He saw me as being unappreciative of what he had done for me and cavalier about a very important and serious matter to him. “Yes, well, maybe I am going to tell you about some more crazy things. Maybe even crazier then saucers or anything else you ever heard about. Maybe, even so crazy it is beyond your comprehension.”

“Why don’t you tell me then? Tell me what’s going on and let’s see. That’s the third or fourth time you’ve told me I wouldn’t understand. Understand what?”

He looked around to check on his wife. It was getting late, and she had left the kitchen and gone to bed. Even so, he closed the patio doors. There was no one to hear us now but the pigeons. If he could have spoken French he would have, he was being that secretive.

“Before I say one word, I want your promise never to tell a single soul.”

“No, I won’t. I mean I won’t promise you. I might have twenty minutes ago, but not now. I might want to write a book someday about all this. I’m going to have to go back to square one. Maybe publishing a book about the Waffen SS treasure might be the answer to my coming money problems. You’ve left me with nothing. You shouldn’t object. But at any rate, you needn’t worry. I promise not to write anything that’ll get you in trouble with the authorities.”

Ralph thought for maybe a full five seconds, which is a long time to sit and stare at one another. I never wavered or blinked, and neither did he. Then he started to bite his lip; he was agitated and ill at ease. He shifted on his uncomfortable ice cream chair and began to purse his lips, touching them with his forefinger as though to consciously stifle what he was about to say. He hesitated another few seconds, as though he was about to open a can of worms and make me privy to the inside. Finally, he said: “All right.”

Then I asked him if he minded if I took notes. He rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders before replying: “I guess you leave me no choice. If you are going to repeat it in writing, I suppose you ought to repeat it correctly.

“I want to start by agreeing with you,” Ralph said. “I want you to know I am SS, as you have surmised. Not Waffen SS but Gestapo. And if you neglect to write it the way it all really happened, I am going to be arrested.”

He saw the confused look on my face, and he hurriedly began explaining without my pushing.

“The Waffen were, and still are, the fighting divisions of the SS. The Gestapo was the state police and the Schutstaffein SS were the butchers who ran the death camps. Heinrich Himmler commanded all of them, and all of them were up to their eyeballs in atrocities–without parallel. And all of them were convicted of war crimes in absentia at Nuremberg. But I want to make this perfectly clear: It was Oddlie’s idea that I make an attempt to ingratiate myself with these people. And in doing so, it naturally led to my being inducted into one of their branches.

“I could not serve in what later became known as the Waffen, because I could not complete their basic training. Most people could not, whether or not they had a bad leg; it was just too demanding. Not many of our conditioned soldiers could. Maybe our Special Forces–maybe, but few others, including our Marines. It was just too tough. But the Gestapo was something else again. And if I was to live with these people, I had to belong to something.”

This much of his story I already knew, and I think I’ve told you about it. At any rate, I said nothing to him and he pressed on: “Now, once I became a member, I hastened to make myself indispensable. I could not risk a change in commanders, and then find myself working as a clerk at someplace other than the Obersalzberg. The thing I hit on was becoming a teacher.

“Members of the SS were continually being schooled. Advancement in degrees within military rank was expected of everybody. It was much like the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, from which the system, incidentally, was derived. Not the rites, I hasten to point out, but the way it was organized. But I am getting ahead of myself. Before passing on, I want you to understand I became what might be thought of as a master mason. I became an authority if you will. It was a small step from there to becoming a teacher of teachers.”

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked him.

“From their library,” he answered. “Their underground facilities contained one of the truly large specialized libraries in the world. Before their departing units burned it, it contained volumes of history regarding the practices of ancient religions and the occult. I emphasize the occult, although there were some stacks containing legitimate science texts. There were others not so legitimate. They dealt mostly with biology and genetics. All the recognized authorities were there, plus those I choose to call off-the-wall geneticists.

“Then there was the complete works of authors who had an influence on Hitler and the other founding members of the Nazi Party. But for now, I want you to understand why I swore the required oaths and went through the required initiation rites. And I want you to understand why I made myself indispensable. They say the only indispensable man was Adam. But at that time, on the Obersalzburg, I might have been running a close second.

“I speak of acquiring my knowledge from the library,” he went on to say, “I am afraid this is an over simplification; there was a lot more to it than that. In fact, I was sent to a special college in Berlin for training. One of the things the SS strived for was standardization. Everybody was taught the exact same thing as everybody else, regardless of where they were serving. Even in combat, the training continued unabated and unaltered. Of course, Hitler and Himmler approved this standardized program. They even collaborated in the writing of the training prospectus.”

 

When I left Ralph, I was thoroughly exhausted. I had been talking some, but mostly listening to him for three hours without interruption, and with a focus of mind new to me. I was quite surprised to find how tiring this sort of concentration can be. And then there was my backside, temporarily waffled from the narrow metal strips cross-hatching the bottom of his dinky chairs. And my elbows were sore from leaning on the hard, set tiles of the table.

As if this was not enough, there was the disappointment at having lost everything, although I had told Lucy many times that I wished I could find a way to give it back. But deep down, I knew I wouldn’t. I knew it was just talk. But never in my wildest dreams did I ever see the time I would lose it all–gold, diamonds, and self-respect.

I needed a cup of coffee. Like many people, I’m caffeine dependent, an addict. Partway up the next block was a diner. I walked in. The counterman was reading the daily tip-sheet. He barely took notice of me before discouraging me from taking a seat and interrupting his concentration.

“We’re closed, buddy. The night cook’s left and our day man hasn’t showed yet. Best I can do is coffee. I got some day old cake.” He said it with a take-it or leave-it tone in his voice I had heard many times before, acceptable in his society, but grating to a southerner like myself–especially one in my present mood.

“Don’t worry about it,” I retorted, with a sandpaper touch of my own. “Just coffee.”

I was grateful I had the place to myself. If there was ever a time I needed to be alone with my thoughts, it was right now. And for once, I didn’t want any behind-the-counter cheerful thinking he had to talk to entertain me. Friendly for a tip was not this guy, and that was all right with me. In fact, tonight I preferred him just as he was, disagreeable, sullen, morose, and un-communicating.

I sat in a well-worn booth rather than at the counter. Workmen, I presume, with screwdrivers in their belts had poked holes in the red fabric covers as they sat down. There was no way to mend them short of an expensive re-covering job. And to keep the batting from spilling out more than it had, they had patched it with some kind of tape.

The booth cushions reminded me of a yacht on the gulf, years ago. Guest fisherman had sat down in this expensive salon with needle nose hook removers in their pockets. The upholstery was a disaster.

I could see somebody nervous had fiddled with the tape on the seats like it was an itching blemish, worrying it into frayed edges. The oilcloth table covers were red and white checkered–garish, unpleasing to the eye even when new. Now they were pockmarked with brown cigarette burns, making them appear for all the world like a Ralston Purina something or other spawned under a rock.

Counters looked at me again with a disapproving look on his face, as though he might have an ulcer or some other form of dyspepsia. I thought he might be in the wrong line of work. I thought, perhaps, that the sight of a plate of loose scrambled eggs this time of the morning might result in his turning green. I know more than a little about his problem. He’s suffering from the usual–a hangover. I’ve been there a few times myself. What he needs is a couple of shooters–a couple of boosters–something to settle his stomach, something to change his personality, if only temporarily, something to make him a little more customer friendly.

None of this bothers me, though, or even interests me very much, not this morning. The insular attitude of many of this city’s inhabitants, some of which always rubs off on me, is of no consequence this morning. I’m too wrapped up in my own thoughts to contemplate why they always appear to be depressed. Anyway, this might be better left for religionists, sociologists, and other professional do-gooders to ponder. I’m too engrossed in my own world, thinking about things far and away more important than the mundane survival affairs of those abrasive personalities insisting on living in the squalor of New York.

What Ralph told me, in addition to his telling me he had given back my treasure, had affected me mentally. I was off balance. I entered a surreal world when he went into detail about the origins of the SS and the significance of Steinmann’s box. I’m still not completely recovered, nor do I expect to be any time soon. It’s as though I entered a time warp; I’m still engrossed in things alien to respectable people: mysticism, black magic, and other forms of the occult.

After saucering and blowing, Cajun style, and inhaling the first cup, I began sipping the second. I’m starting to wake up. My mind, which has been numbed by the late hour and the loss of my fortune, and then Ralph’s preposterous story, was recovering a certain lost clarity. Preposterous? It would have been if I had heard it from anybody but him.

I sat perusing my notes and making corrections, ignoring the occasional glare from the counterman. In addition to what I had written, Ralph had given me a copy of the training outline used by instructors in the Waffen SS. It’s not an original. It’s a Xerox copy. The original would be worth a fortune to a collector.

I have three hours to kill before my flight home. I can spend it here, relatively unbothered, drinking coffee, ostensibly waiting for the day cook to appear, or I can do it at the terminal, packed together sardine style with the traveling public. I choose to do it here, not because of my fear of airports, which Ralph, who is knowledgeable in such things, has convinced me is irrational. He says it’s rooted in some form of psychosis, brought on by stress. But I need peace and quiet to figure out my next move, so I’ve elected to stay put here for an hour or so.

Speaking of my fear of airports: I had seen this Corporal Muller once in an airport. I was sure I had. I was sure it was him. He had been in one of my squads, but I couldn’t remember his name; however, I did remember his face. Ralph says the fact I was running around in serious incognito, and already in some advanced state of anxiety, had led me to jump to conclusions. Muller was a figment of my imagination it seems. Oh, I saw somebody all right, somebody who looked like him. But there were just too many logistical problems, which couldn’t be explained away for it to have been him. According to Ralph, while I was dodging phantoms, the real Muller was somewhere safely tucked in bed.

Adrenalin is a funny thing. According to Ralph, when you have been infused with heavy doses over time as I have, something happens to your mind. This drug builds up in your spinal cortex, and it changes the way your mind processes information. They call it psychosis. Ralph believes I was borderline psychotic. If it had continued, I might have come down with a debilitating seizure; as it was, I was just putting the wrong interpretation on what I was seeing. But thanks to him, I think I’m on the mend. At least I’m not dreading my trip back to the airport as I had been.

After Ralph told the commission people about me forgetting the whereabouts of the gold, they changed their minds. Their new theory was that Muller had been working with the Reinickes, and Steinmann was directing and financing the show from somewhere. Surprisingly, Joyce Wagner had been placed in San Angelo by the Commission to watch Muller’s family and Lucy. Ralph and his organization knew this, but for their own reasons never told me. Joyce was mixed up with Worthington, but in a way that was of no interest to anybody but his wife. And I suppose no one but Ralph cared that I was chasing around the countryside scared to death of my own shadow.

He also explained to me how Reinicke’s sons, under the direction of Steinmann, had tortured and killed Eric and later Carl while seeking the location of Ravensbruck. I was most gratified to hear Ralph’s people had now come to the conclusion it was them and that I had never been involved with what happened to Eric and that he would see to it they understood about Lucy and would keep it confidential.

Steinmann knew Eric was in love with Françoise; Murielle had told him so. Eric had been stationed in Nancy, France, after he left me, and Steinmann knew he was going to Paris to see her whenever he could. They kidnapped Eric and then tortured him. As I said, he never told them anything about the gold, because he never knew anything. But he did know the whereabouts of Carl.

Carl was living the life of your average American up in his home town in Minnesota, working, minding his own business, waiting for something to happen. He had traveled to Germany several times with his wife looking for the gold, but of course he couldn’t find it. So he was about to give up and wait for me to contact him. Then the two of us, along with Eric, were going back with our shovels to Ravensbruck.

The Reinickes, accompanied by either Muller or possibly Steinmann, himself, beat Carl until he died. This was another thing the Commission detectives had suspected for some time, and Ralph failed to tell me. It was as though they were using me for some kind of bait to catch them; maybe they were. But Lucy’s Winchester rendered moot the necessity for any further investigation of the Reinicke brothers.

It was very upsetting to have confirmed officially what I long suspected–the reason my two friends never told their tormentors anything in exchange for their lives was because they never knew anything. They never had the slightest idea where the gold was buried. I planned it that way. And Ralph knew I had. And now that I know for sure I’m directly responsible for what happened to them, I can expect some more sleepless nights.